Disaggregating hybridity
| Author | Gearoid Millar |
| Published date | 01 July 2014 |
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313519465 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Disaggregating hybridity: Why hybrid
institutions do not produce predictable
experiences of peace
Gearoid Millar
Institute for Conflict, Transition, and Peace Research (ICTPR), University of Aberdeen
Abstract
The term ‘hybrid’ has been widely incorporated into recent peacebuilding scholarship to describe an array of
peacebuilding endeavors, including hybrid peacekeeping missions, hybrid criminal tribunals, hybrid governance,
and the hybrid peace. However, while widely deployed, hybridity itself is under-theorized and variably applied by
scholars. Major concerns arise, therefore, concerning the concept’s usefulness for peacebuilding theory, policy, and
practice. Most problematically, while some scholars use hybridity descriptively to illustrate the mixing of interna-
tional and local institutions, practices, rituals, and concepts, many today deploy hybridity prescriptively,implying
that international actors can plan and administer hybridity to foster predictable social experiences in complex post-
conflict states. This latter literature, therefore, assumes predictable relationships between the administration of
hybrid institutions – of law, of governance, or of economics, for example – and the provision of peace-
promoting local experiences of those institutions – experiences of justice, authority, empowerment, etc. This article
argues that these assumptions are flawed and illustrates how a disaggregated theory of hybridity can avoid such
errors. This theory distinguishes between four levels of hybridity – institutional,practical,ritual,andconceptual
– characterized by their variable amenability to purposeful administration. The article illustrates how prescriptive
approaches that assume direct and predictable relationships between institutions and experiences fail to recognize
that concepts underpin local understandings and experiences of the world and, therefore, play a mediating role
between institutions and experiences. Using examples from Sierra Leone, the article shows that while concepts are
always hybrid, conceptual hybridity is inherently resistant to planned administration. As a result, internationally
planned and administered hybrid institutions will not result in predictable experiences and may even result in neg-
ative or conflict-promoting experiences. The article illustrates the dangers of assuming any predictable relation-
ships between the four levels of hybridity, and, therefore, between the administration of institutional hybrids
and the predictable provision of positive local experiences.
Keywords
conflict resolution, hybrid peace, hybridity, peacebuilding, Sierra Leone, transitional justice
Introduction
As a field that promotes strong links between scholarship
and practice, Conflict Resolution (CR) has an interest in
proposing, designing, and even administering processes
to assist in real-world conflict situations. To play this
role, CR scholars and practitioners must accurately
understand the world with which they engage. It is for
this reason that conflict analysis and empirical studies
of historical and contemporary conflict have been such
a central linchpin of the discipline. Recently however,
CR scholars and those in the related fields of Peacebuild-
ing (PB) and Transitional Justice (TJ) have been strug-
gling with a major intellectual and practical problem.
These disciplines, the inheritors of a particular Western
intellectual tradition, today primarily theorize about
Corresponding author:
g.millar@abdn.ac.uk
Journal of Peace Research
2014, Vol. 51(4) 501–514
ªThe Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343313519465
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